


The Serpent Underneath

by trashwriter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter Friendship, Draco Malfoy is a Little Shit, Eventual Relationships, F/F, F/M, Female Albus Dumbledore, Female Dudley Dursley, Female Gellert Grindelwald, Female Harry Potter, Female Rubeus Hagrid - Freeform, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle Attend Hogwarts Together, Harry Potter is Not a Horcrux, Harry Potter is a Good Friend, M/M, Possessive Tom Riddle, Silver Trio, Slow Burn, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherin Politics, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, but he is still himself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27170618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashwriter/pseuds/trashwriter
Summary: Greta Grindelwald’s fifty-year reign of terror comes to an end in a single night when she invades the Potter home in Godric’s Hollow hunting for the Cloak and fails to kill young Maggie Potter.Ten years later, Maggie Potter and Tom Riddle meet for the first time in Diagon Alley on the way to buy their school supplies.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	1. The Girl-Who-Lived

On an otherwise quiet street in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood, a woman appeared. She arrived so suddenly and so silently that anyone might be excused for thinking she’d popped right out of the ground.

And she was quite an odd woman too.

She was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of her hair, which hung in a long rope of a braid past her waist, two silver bells tethered to the end, chiming softly with her every movement. She was wearing long robes, a purple cloak and high heeled boots with big silver buckles. Her eyes were bright and blue behind her half-moon spectacles and her long nose was crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice.

This woman’s name was Alba Dumbledore.

Alba Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise it, but she had just arrived on a street where everything about her from her name to her boots was unwelcome. Instead she rummaged around in the sleeve of her robes until she came up with an odd little device like an old-fashioned cigarette lighter.

She clicked it several times and one by one the warm orange lights in the streetlamps vanished into it leaving the neighbourhood in deep darkness.

Once this was done, she tucked the device away. Her cloak trailed behind her as she strode down the walk across from number four the click of her boot heels loud in the quiet of the night.

She sat down on a low garden wall next to the tabby cat standing there like a sentinel.

“You might have told me you intended to be here, Minerva,” she said softly.

She turned her head to smile at the cat but in its place there now sat a severe looking woman. She too was dressed in a cloak, hers a dark hunter green over a high-collared black dress that was out of fashion by several decades. She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose more securely, and arched a brow at the older woman.

“You had no way of knowing it was me,” she pointed out.

“My dear I have never known a cat to sit so stiffly.”

“You’d be stiff too if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day.”

“When you could have been out, celebrating? I passed a dozen parties on my way here.”

Minerva sniffed angrily, “Everybody is out celebrating, all right, you’d think after ten years of open war they’d be more careful. But no, they’re gathered in the streets in droves not even trying to blend in with the muggles. Pure carelessness. Merlin, Diggle’s ridiculous display was on the eleven o’clock news. And what a fine thing it would be if just after we were finally free of this war, we found ourselves exposed.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“Alba,” she said. “You’re not naïve and playing at stupid doesn’t suit you. Even if _sh_ _e_ is gone for good, it has been a day and half a night. Her followers are at large and they won’t be sitting idle.”

Unconcerned by the reprimand Alba pulled a half empty tube of wax paper from the pocket of her robes and offered it to Minerva, “Lemon drop?”

The look she levelled on her bordered on sulfurous.

“No, thank you.”

“We have much to be thankful for, Minerva, it would not do to forget that. Grindelwald is gone. For the time being and we can all breathe a bit easier for that. The Acolytes are divided, leaderless. And who would dare step into the shoes of the Dark Lady? None.”

“So, it is true then? The rumours?”

Alba hummed a bit, “Well I cannot speak to the rumours you may have heard, but I can confirm that Greta Grindelwald is indeed gone.”

“And Lily and James?”

“Gone, also.”

Minerva made a small injured noise and drew in a shuddering breath.

“I didn’t want to believe it. Sweet Circe…what about wee Maggie?”

“She lives.”

“So, it is true? That Grindelwald, she tried to kill the wee lass and her power somehow…broke? That she couldn’t kill that little girl?”

Alba took her time answering, sucking thoughtfully on a lemon drop.

“We may never know the full truth of what happened in that house,” she said quietly. “The word I have received suggests that James Potter attempted to duel the Dark Lady to buy Lily and young Margaret the time to escape, but it was in vain. Lily was killed, brutally, not an arm’s length away from her child. Yet Maggie lives, completely unscathed but for a cut on her forehead.”

“How is that possible?”

“I suspect a very old and powerful magic.”

Minerva nodded thoughtfully.

Alba took a small silver pocket-watch on a fine chain out from the sleeve of her robes and consulted it.

“Ruby is late. I suppose it was she who told you I’d be here, by the way?”

“Of course,” said Minerva. “Ruby worries and so do I. And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you’ve come _here_ of all places?”

“I’ve come to bring young Maggie to her aunt and uncle,” Alba said. “They are the only family she has left now.”

Minerva sat up even straighter and whirled on her friend.

“You don’t mean—you can’t mean the people who live here?” she said, jabbing her finger at number four. “Alba you can’t! I’ve been watching them all day. You couldn’t find two people who are less tolerant if you tried. And their son is already a spoiled little toad of a boy! I would sooner leave the girl with a pit viper! What about her godparents?”

“We never discovered the traitor Minerva,” Alba told her, gentle but firm. “Greta Grindelwald learned the location of the Potter home from one of their closest confidants. The Acolytes will be looking for the child who destroyed their mistress. Maggie will be safer here with her blood family than anywhere else in the world.”

Minerva pressed her lips together in a thin line, but didn’t argue any further.

“How is the girl getting here then?” she said finally.

“Ruby is bringing her.”

“And do you think that’s wise? To trust Ruby with something as important as this?”

“I would trust Ruby with my life.”

“Her heart is always in the right place, I not saying it isn’t,” Minerva said. “But you can’t pretend she’s not careless. She does tend to—what was that?”

A low rumbling sound broke the silence, growing steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight.

The sound swelled to a low roar and the two woman just had the idea to look up when a huge motorbike dropped out of the air and rumbled to a stop in front of them.

If the motorbike was huge, it was nothing compared to the woman astride it.

She was twice as tall as a normal man broad shouldered and muscled like an Amazon. She looked simply too big to be allowed. And so wild. Long tangles of curly black hair tumbled over her back and shoulders and she was dressed in deerskin trousers and a lace-up vest of some knobbly green hide that did nothing to cover her massive biceps.

In her arms was a bundle of blankets.

“Ruby,” said Alba. “At last. And where on Earth did you get that motorbike?”

“Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore,” she said. “Sirius Black lent it to me.”

“There was no trouble, I take it?”

“No ma’am. The house was almost destroyed but I got her out all right before the muggles started swarmin’ around. She fell asleep just as we were flyin’ over Bristol. Poor tyke.”

Alba and Minerva bent forward to peer at the bundle of blankets. Inside, only just visible, was a baby girl, fast asleep. Under the fringe of her dark hair was a raised cut, shaped like a bolt of lightning.

“Is that where—?”

“Yes,” Alba said, smoothing a finger over the injury. “She’ll carry that scar for the rest of her life.”

“Couldn’t you do something about it, Alba?”

“I suspect not,” said Alba. “But even if I could I don’t know that I would. They can come quite in handy, scars. I have one myself above my left knee which is a perfect map of the London Underground.”

“This and that are hardly the same thing Alba,” scoffed Minerva.

Alba ignored her and took the baby into her arms, turning toward the house at the end of the walk with the brass number four tacked onto the door above the knocker.

“Wait, Professor, could I—could I say goodbye to her?”

Alba paused and Ruby bent her great shaggy head over Maggie and gave her a smacking kiss on her rosy little cheek.

Then, suddenly, Ruby let out a noise like a wounded dog and began to sob.

“Ruby!” hissed Minerva, bristling like a cat with its tail trodden on. “You’ll wake the entire street!”

“Sorry,” sobbed Ruby, taking out a large spotted handkerchief and blowing her nose in it. “But I just can’t stand it—Lily and James dead—an’ wee Maggie off ter live with muggles—”

Minerva grabbed Ruby around her shoulders and bent her nearly double so that she could sob into her shoulder where the noise would be at least a little muffled.

“Ruby you need to get a grip or we’ll be found!” she said, patting the larger woman gingerly on the back.

Alba made her way up the walk the bells in her hair chiming faintly.

She laid Maggie gently on the doorstep, and took a moment to refresh the warming charm on her blankets before drawing an envelope out of the sleeve of her robe. She smoothed out an invisible crease in the thick parchment and tucked the letter into the folds of Maggie’s blankets.

Then she stood and made her way back to the other two women.

For a full minute the three of them stood there and just watched the little bundle.

Ruby’s shoulder’s shook but she had a hand clapped over her mouth and made little enough noise. Minerva blinked furiously and swiped at the corners of her eyes.

“Well,” said Alba finally. “That’s that. We have no business lingering. We may as well go and join the celebrations.”

“Pardon my saying so, Professor,” said Ruby. “But I don’t much feel like celebrating. I’d best catch up with Sirius. He won’t be wantin’ company but he’ll be needin’ it.”

She gave both the professors a nod and swung one long leg back over the motorbike and kicked the engine to life. With a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.

“I shall see you again quite shortly I expect Minerva,” said Alba. “I have a meeting with the Ministry representatives and the Board of Governors tomorrow. It is high time that Hogwarts re-opened.”

Minerva gave no reply, her throat choked with unshed tears, and a moment later a tabby cat slunk around the low garden wall and off into the night.

Alba Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street.

On the corner she stopped and took out her fanciful silver Put-Outer. She clicked it once, and twelve little balls of orange light zipped back along the street into their proper lamps so that the street suddenly glowed warmly. She could just see the edge of the bundle of blankets, swathed in shadow on the stoop of number four.

“Good luck, wee Maggie,” she murmured. “I am sorry.”

She turned sharply on her heel and with a swish of her cloak, she was gone. As though she’d never been at all, not even a breath of air to announce her departure.

A cool November breeze ruffled the neat lawns and hedges, which lay, silent and tidy under the star-spotted sky. This was the very last place you would expect astonishing and impossible things to happen.

Maggie Potter rolled over inside her blankets, still fast asleep. One small hand closed over the letter beside her and she slept on, not knowing she was special, not knowing she was famous, not knowing that she would be woken in a few hours’ time by her aunt’s shrill scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that she would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by her cousin Daisy.

She couldn’t know that at that very same moment, people were meeting, in secret and in public, all over the country. That they were holding up their glasses and cheering in hushed or bellowing voices: “To Maggie Potter—the Girl-Who-Lived!”


	2. The Snakes and the Letter

Maggie startled awake when her aunt pounded on her door with the flat of her hand.

“Up!” she barked.

She listened as her aunt moved around the kitchen, starting the coffee and setting a pan on the cooker with a soft clank.

Maggie sighed rolled over in bed, stretching. The dream she’d been having slipped through her fingers like smoke but she had a feeling it had been a good one.

There was not use trying find the threads of it again. Aunt Petunia was back outside the door again.

“Are you up yet?”

“Nearly,” Maggie said.

“Well hurry up, lazy girl! I need you to look after the bacon and don’t you dare burn it! I need everything to be perfect on Daisy’s special day.”

Maggie bit back a groan scrubbing at her face. Daisy’s birthday. She’d nearly managed to forget.

Her cousin was always utterly and completely spoiled by her parents, who never seemed to be able to deny her anything. But on her birthday, it was a hundred times worse.

Maggie shoved her glasses onto her nose and rooted around for a clean shirt. She found one that wasn’t too wrinkled shook a spider the size of a walnut out of the hem before she put it on. It dropped down next to her and scuttled madly over her knee and into the darkness. Maggie wasn’t bothered. She was used to spiders. The cupboard under the stairs was full of them after all, and that was where she slept.

Once she was properly dressed, she padded into the kitchen, rolling her eyes when she saw the collection of gifts. They were carefully wrapped with crisp corners and fluffy bows and piled up in a small hill that dwarfed the kitchen table.

It looked like Daisy had received all the things she’d asked for, from the personal computer to the second television. There was even a pale pink bicycle with a wicker basket on the front, which Daisy must have wanted because it was cute because she hated anything that even remotely resembled exercise. Everything, that was, except stomping all over people with her shiny patent-leather mary-janes both literally and figuratively.

Her favourite victim was Maggie, since she wasn’t allowed to fight back, but outside of the Dursley house she couldn’t often catch her.

Maggie might not have looked like it but she was fast.

Perhaps it had something to do with living in a small dark cupboard but Maggie had always been small and skinny for her age. And in thrifted denims and overlarge hand-me-downs from her Aunt Petunia she looked even smaller and skinnier than she actually was.

She had a thin face, coltish legs with knobbly knees, wild black hair and big brown eyes. She wore big old-man specs with chunky black frames and there was a scar on her forehead that looked like a bolt of lightning.

The one time she’d been able to summon the courage to ask her aunt about it she’d been informed that she’d gotten it in the car crash where her parents had died.

“And don’t ask questions!” she’d snapped, livid.

Don’t ask questions—this was the first rule of a quiet life with the Dursleys.

She was just turning over the bacon when her uncle lumbered into the kitchen and sat down at his usual place.

“Put your hair up, girl, you look like a ragamuffin. And bring my coffee.”

“Yes, Uncle Vernon,” Maggie murmured unhooking the hair-tie from around her wrist and scraping her hair back into a ponytail tight enough to tug on the skin over her temples.

Uncle Vernon glanced up when she set his coffee by his elbow along with a scone and some marmalade.

“You need a haircut,” he barked in lieu of thanks.

It was true Maggie’s fringe flopped into her eyes untidily, but that seemed to happen whether she cut her hair or not.

Maggie had set the bacon on the warming plate and was frying eggs by the time Daisy flounced into the room.

Nominally Daisy looked a great deal like Uncle Vernon with a round, rosy face, and thick blond hair that she’d taken to wearing curled into sprightly ringlets. She had big bright blue eyes framed by long lashes and a sweet rosebud mouth.

Aunt Petunia said that Daisy looked like an angel.

Uncle Vernon said that in a few years Daisy would be beating the boys off with a stick.

Maggie wasn’t fooled though.

Just because Daisy was a little bit pretty didn’t mean anything. Underneath all the fluffy pink cardigans and pleated skirts Daisy was a rotten little harpy and all the boys and bows in the world wouldn’t ever make up for it.

Maggie served up the eggs, bacon and scones with all the dexterity of a seasoned waitress despite the limited space and was able to sneak a few pieces of toast with burnt edges while Daisy was counting her tribute.

“Thirty-six,” she said, pouting. “That’s two less than last year.”

“Here now sweetums, you haven’t counted Auntie Marge’s present, right here under the big one from Mummy and Daddy, see?”

“Thirty-seven then,” she sniffed, going red in the face.

Maggie had learned to gauge her cousin’s moods out of necessity and rather than sitting down with her plate and making a try for the bacon she lingered in the kitchen and bolted down a mandarin orange from the fruit bowl and the last scone. It was dry without butter but it was more important to be out of range in case Daisy decided to lash out.

Her cousin’s tantrums were the stuff of schoolyard legends.

Aunt Petunia also seemed to sense the danger because she was quick to say, “We’ll go shopping later on this afternoon, darling, and you can pick out your two new presents yourself. Won’t that be lovely popkin?”

Daisy narrowed her big blue eyes, aware that she was being placated and not pleased about it, but she gave in with comparatively little ill-grace.

“I want to go to the department store and get a lipstick,” she said firmly.

Aunt Petunia grimaced a bit, her feelings about make-up on young girls had been the topic of many a dinner-table discussion during one of their neighbours’ formative years, but patted Daisy on her head regardless.

“Of course, blossom, you’re getting to be so grown up,” she said.

Disaster averted, Aunt Petunia dropped a kiss on her daughter’s cheek and hurried into the other room to answer the phone.

Maggie and Uncle Vernon stayed put, watching Daisy unwrap her sixteen new dresses, jeweled wristwatch, bicycle, cine-camera, second television and new computer. She was just exclaiming over a remote-controlled bird that made lively chirping noises when she prodded it when Aunt Petunia returned to the kitchen.

She was frowning, her mouth pinched and sour like she’d eaten a lemon and her arms crossed over her chest.

“Who was it, Pet?” asked Uncle Vernon over the top of his newspaper.

“Mrs. Figg,” Aunt Petunia answered. “She’s broken her leg and is still in hospital, she won’t be able to take…her.”

Daisy’s perfect little rosebud mouth twisted into a nasty scowl and Maggie felt her heart sink.

Mrs. Figg was their elderly neighbour. She lived alone except for a truly terrifying number of cats and her house smelled of must, cabbage and animal dander but she was nice enough if a bit doddering.

Maggie had once spent an afternoon over there learning to knit and another time Mrs. Figg had regaled her with tales of her wild youth and let her have a sip of raspberry cordial. Maggie wouldn’t say that she liked it there, exactly, but she did not want to be a target of Daisy’s temper not even if it meant going to an aquarium or adventure park or wherever.

The Dursleys always let Daisy bring along a friend on her birthday outings and Maggie also wasn’t keen on being outnumbered.

“Now what,” she demanded, glaring at Maggie as if she’d arranged the whole thing.

“We could phone Marge?” suggested Uncle Vernon.

“Don’t be ridiculous Vernon, she hates the girl.”

The feeling was mutual. Not that Maggie thought she’d be consulted about her preference. The Dursleys often seemed to forget that she was a thinking, feeling person who could understand them just fine.

“What about, you know, what’s her name? Your school friend, Yvette?”

“Yvonne,” Aunt Petunia snapped, “She’s on vacation in Majorca.”

“You could just leave me here,” suggested Maggie. “I’m old enough.”

“And come back to find the house in ruins, absolutely not!”

Maggie thought that Aunt Petunia thought a little too highly of her desire for wanton destruction if she believed that she’d blow up the house where she also, at least nominally, lived. But, then again, logic had never been a guiding force for the Dursleys.

“I suppose we could take her to the zoo, and leave her in the car,” Petunia said.

“That car is new, Pet, I won’t leave it with her unattended!”

At the turn that the conversation was taking Daisy took it upon herself to make her opinion known. She let her naturally misty eyes fill with water, screwed up her face and began to wail.

Maggie knew that she wasn’t really crying, it had been years since she’d truly cried, but she’d learned early on that this was an effective method for getting what she wanted from her parents and getting out of trouble with teachers, store clerks and other authority figures.

Predictably the wail wrenched at Aunt Petunia’s single heartstring and she threw her arms around her daughter almost wailing herself. 

“Oh, oh sugarplum, I won’t let her spoil your day!”

“You can’t let her come with us, Mummy! She ruins everything!”

“We’ll figure something, pea blossom, not to worry,” Uncle Vernon assured her gruffly, patting her on the knee

The one time Maggie had cried in front of Uncle Vernon he’d smacked her sharply and told her to stuff her childish nonsense.

But, despite Uncle Vernon’s promise, not a minute later the doorbell was ringing announcing the arrival of Mrs. Polkiss from the next street over and her daughter Penelope. Penelope was Daisy’s best friend. They had known each other since they were toddlers.

Penelope was tall, thin, blond and very pretty and she had three older sisters and wore a training bra and was therefore considered very mature. Daisy wouldn’t be caught dead crying in front of her and so she quickly dashed at her eyes and was rosy and perfect again in moments.

The Dursleys had one guiding star, one rule that even Daisy subscribed to, and that was that no matter what should happen behind closed doors, in the eyes of the public they were all to be perfect.

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had never argued in a supermarket, they didn’t snap and scowl at neighbours and acquaintances and everybody thought they were lovely people, if a bit boring. This was excluding Uncle Vernon’s subordinates at work, all of whom were excused from forming opinions owing to their being of lesser importance than Uncle Vernon.

It had taken Daisy a while to catch on to this idea, but once she’d learned that if she looked like an angel and acted like an angel, she could get away with murder she’d embraced the idea of a public persona wholeheartedly.

Twenty minutes later, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hadn’t figured out what to do with her and Maggie, who couldn’t believe her luck, was crammed into the back seat with Daisy and Penelope, on her way to the zoo for the very first time.

Before they’d left, Aunt Petunia had taken her aside.

“None of your nonsense girl,” she said, gripping Maggie firmly by the jaw her carefully manicured nails pressing sharply. “I’m warning you.”

Maggie dropped her eyes.

“Yes, Aunt Petunia.”

There was no use arguing.

The problem was that strange things happened around Maggie, and there was no use telling the Dursleys that she didn’t make them happen.

When Daisy had cut her braid off with craft scissors leaving her hair as short as a boy’s, with ragged uneven ends. She’d spent the whole night dreading how the other kids at school would laugh but, in the morning, her hair was the same as it had been the day before.

Another time when Maggie was working in the garden and Aunt Marge’s dog, Ripper, had ripped up all Aunt Petunia’s roses and Maggie knew she was in for a smacking, she’d turned around for one moment and the next the flowers were in full bloom even though it was late autumn.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. When she wished hard enough to disappear sometimes, she turned invisible. Garden snakes would stop by to drape themselves all over her and beg for mice and crickets. And once when Daisy had pushed her off the top of a play structure she’d floated to the ground like a leaf.

Whenever her relatives caught wind of an instance of “nonsense” Maggie got in terrible trouble. She was locked in the cupboard or had to go without meals or she got a smacking with the belt. The problem of course was that Maggie couldn’t make them stop any more than she could make them happen on purpose.

It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families.

Uncle Vernon bought Daisy and Penelope big chocolate ice creams at the entrance and when the lady in the van spotted Maggie, he was forced to get her a cheap lemon ice lolly as well.

It was pretty good too.

Maggie spent the morning trailing a little behind the Dursleys and keeping well away from Daisy and Penelope who had been given disposable cameras from the gift shop and were snapping photos of every animal they came across.

After lunch they decided to escape the heat of the day and visit the reptile house where it was cool and dark.

That was where the trouble began.

There were all kinds of lizards and turtles crawling over logs and bits of bark in the glass enclosures and Daisy and Penelope occupied themselves trying to spot the crocodile in the big enclosure near the back.

Thinking she was safe enough Maggie planted herself in front of a pair of glossy black Egyptian asps who were eager to hear her compliment them on their beauty and deadliness.

Maggie was just about to move on to the jewel bright tree-snakes in the next enclosure over when Aunt Petunia slapped her sharply.

Maggie clapped a hand over her stinging cheek and gaped at her Aunt who had never once hit her in public before.

“Stop it!” she hissed. “Stop it at once!”

Looking past her Aunt’s shoulder Maggie swallowed thickly.

Every snake in the whole reptile house was pressed against the glass, coils undulating and heads swaying as if they were hypnotised. All of them begging for attention in soft hisses.

“Do you hear me, girl?”

“I can’t—I—I’ll go. I’ll wait for you outside.”

Aunt Petunia pressed her lips tightly together and let Maggie scramble off, but that was the end of Maggie’s fun day at the zoo.

When they were back and number four and Penelope had been sent home for the day, Maggie was locked into her cupboard and not let back out again.

\---

The incident earned Maggie her longest ever punishment. She missed the last weeks of school and by the time she was allowed out of her cupboard again they were a full week into summer hols and even her smallest denims needed to be held up with a belt.

Not that Maggie wanted to wear them anyway.

On the last day of her punishment Maggie had been taken downstairs to the laundry and told to bend over the sink while Aunt Petunia whipped her bum with the flat side of a belt until she bled and cried.

So, it was skirts and dresses until the scabs flaked off, which meant a lot of Daisy calling her “frog-legs” and making ribbit noises whenever they were in the same room.

Maggie was glad school was over because it meant that as long as her chores were done, she could escape the house before Daisy’s little girl gang came over to read magazines and do makeovers on each other.

She spent most of the summer wandering the neighbourhood and thinking about the end of the summer holidays where there was a tiny ray of hope.

When September came, she would be off to secondary school and for the first time ever she’d be away from Daisy.

Daisy had a place at an all-girls boarding school called St. Anne’s whereas Maggie would be staying with her aunt and uncle and attending the local comprehensive, Stonewall High. Daisy would be gone for almost three-quarters of the year and Penelope Polkiss was going with her, it was like a dream come true.

Maggie had a chance to start over at a new school where only a few people knew her and no one would be overly invested in making her life miserable. And with Daisy in a whole other school Maggie could actually do her school work without worrying about upstaging her cousin and being punished for it.

Maybe, if she was very fortunate, she’d even make a friend.

One day in July Daisy and Aunt Petunia went out school shopping, leaving Maggie at Mrs. Figg’s. She was given a bit of chocolate cake and planted in front the television while Mrs. Figg napped in her armchair and it was very peaceful.

That evening Daisy twirled around the living room for her family in her brand-new uniform. St. Anne’s girls wore navy jackets or cardigans, crisp sky-blue button-down shirts and blue tartan skirts with knee socks. The whole ensemble suited Daisy’s colouring perfectly and she looked fantastic.

Uncle Vernon said gruffly that his little girl was becoming a woman, and Aunt Petunia took up an entire roll of film with pictures before bursting into tears and throwing her arms around her daughter.

Maggie did not get a proper school uniform. Instead Aunt Petunia set aside two of her old work shirts and they picked up a grey skirt and cardigan from the thrift shop. Maggie had to take the skirt in a bit at the waist and it was a little long but when the whole uniform was assembled it almost looked right.

Later that week, just as Maggie was thinking that she might go the rest of the summer without a single punishment, something odd happened.

Maggie got up from breakfast that morning to fetch the post and found three thing’s lying on the mat. A post card from Aunt Marge who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill and a letter. A letter addressed to Maggie.

Maggie’s heart began to pound.

No one had ever written to her in her entire life. Who would?

She had no friends, no other relatives, and didn’t belong to the library. There was no reason for anyone to send her letters.

Yet there it was, a letter addressed so plainly that there could be no mistake:

_Miss. M. E. Potter_

_The Cupboard Under the Stairs_

_4 Privet Drive_

_Little Whinging_

_Surrey_

Maggie smoothed her fingers over the elaborate writing and bright green ink and wondered what the ‘E’ in her name stood for. There was no stamp and the envelope was sealed with a blob of purplish wax bearing a coat of arms.

Maggie might have stood there all day in a kind of trance if Uncle Vernon hadn’t shouted: “Hurry up, girl!”

Maggie started guiltily.

She knew that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia wouldn’t want her to have this letter, the moment they saw it they would take it away.

So, she shoved it into the waistband of her skirt and pulled her shirt over it and hurried back into the kitchen to hand her uncle the bill and the card.

Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust and set it aside before flipping over the postcard.

“Marge is ill,” he informed Aunt Petunia. “Ate a funny whelk.”

“Oh, how terrible,” said Aunt Petunia absently, craning her neck to get a better look at their neighbour’s yard across the way.

Maggie sat down at the table and tried to concentrate on eating the rest of her porridge, which had already gone cold, and not seeming suspicious.

This seemed to work because Uncle Vernon left for work, Daisy flounced off to Penelope’s house, and Aunt Petunia dismissed Maggie after she’d finished tidying away the breakfast dishes.

Maggie had never been out the door faster, but she kept the letter tucked away until she made it to the park on the other side of Magnolia Crescent.

There she sat down on the empty swing set and took out the letter. Holding her breath as she cracked the seal and drew out the note.

“Dear Miss. Potter,” she murmured, reading aloud. “We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of…what?”

Maggie read it again just to be sure she had it right.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Witchcraft and wizardry. That was what it said.

Behind the letter, there was an equipment list similar to the one that Daisy had received for St. Anne’s with details about the appropriate uniform and the required textbooks…only the uniform included robes, and the book list was filled with titles like _A History of Magic_ and _The Standard Book of Spells Grade One._

Maggie didn’t quite know what to think.

She would have said it was a cruel prank…except that no one she knew had this kind of imagination.

And there was also, the things, the weird things that were always happening around her. The talking snakes. The invisibility.

The _magic_.

Could this letter really be…real?

And if it was real, what was she going to do about it?

She would love to go to a school for magic, if she thought for a second that Aunt Petunia would allow it.

But there was no chance that her aunt would pay for any of the things on this book list, not even if it meant getting Maggie out of the house for most of the year. Not that Maggie knew where these kinds of things could be found in any case.

That was all assuming this wasn’t some sort of hoax.

“We await your reply…” Maggie muttered, chewing on her lower lip.

There was no return address on the envelope but the letter had to have come through the post office so maybe they’d be able to send a reply with just the name of the school…

Before that though she needed a stamp and an envelope and without any pocket money there was only one way she’d be able to get one.

She folded the letter back up and headed for Mrs. Figg’s.

Mrs. Figg hobbled to the door on her crutches and smiled when she saw Maggie standing on her stoop.

“What a delightful surprise,” she said. “Come on in, wee Maggie.”

“Thanks Mrs. Figg.”

“Now, to what do I owe the pleasure, hmm? Did Petunia need me to mind you?”

“No, actually, I was wondering if I could borrow a few things to send a letter with?” she said carefully.

“A letter,” Mrs. Figg gave her a wide conspiratorial grin. “I think I can help out with that.”

Mrs. Figg had an old-fashioned writing desk with a quill and ink pot and thick creamy stationary paper like the kind the letter had been written on. She fished a ball-point pen and a stamp out of the desk for Maggie and told her to take her time before leaving her be.

Maggie pulled the paper closer to herself and wrote in her neatest cursive. 

_Dear Ms. McGonagall,_

_Thank you very much for your letter. I was glad to receive it and would be delighted to attend your school in September if things were different. As it is, I don’t have the money to pay for tuition or school supplies. Unless there is a fund for underprivileged students or something along those lines, I don’t believe I will be able to attend._

_Thank you again for your consideration._

_Sincerely,_

_Margaret Potter_

She was very pleased with the finished product. The reply sounded very mature and grown up, and if there was a fund or a scholarship or something then maybe Ms. McGonagall would write her back and tell her what she could do in order to go to magic school in the fall. If she could manage to do everything without bothering her aunt and uncle maybe she could just leave on September first before they could stop her.

It was a nice dream anyway. 

She folded the paper, tucked it into an envelope and licked it closed and wrote Mrs. Figg’s address as the return address so that if she did get a reply her aunt and uncle wouldn’t know about it.

She stayed the afternoon at Mrs. Figg’s helping her tidy up the ground floor and listening to stories about all of the many cats she owned with good grace.

Before she headed back to number four to start making dinner, she walked down to the end of the street and dropped her letter in the mail box, feeling a bit like someone stranded on a desert island throwing a message in a bottle out into the sea in hopes of being rescued.


End file.
